


Love, Sweet Love

by tielan



Category: Pacific Rim
Genre: Chocolate, Friendship, Gen, Kink Meme, Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-25
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-30 10:14:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 4,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1017382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sweet gifts and sweeter givings - not just of the rich, dark chocolate, but of love and affection, laughter and delight, pleasure and friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For [this prompt](http://pacificrimkink.livejournal.com/2747.html?thread=3391163#t3391163) at the pacific rim kink meme:
>
>> _Mako is a chocolate connoisseur. She won't settle for those cheap waxy bars you get at the ration station. No, she waits for weeks or months for that perfect box of expensive hand crafted chocolate, dreaming of it every second of the day and night. When she finally gets her hands on one, she'll eat the shit out of them in private. Smelling, feeling it melt just a little in her hands, nibbling just a little and swirling it around her mouth, admiring the texture and flavors._  
> 
> 
> It's not quite what the prompter intended I think - it ended up being less about the chocolate and more about the relationships.
> 
> Also for the Pacific Rim-A-Thon challenge on tumblr!

The first time Herc Hansen gives her chocolate from Australia, Mako is fourteen and Hansen- _san_ and his brother, Scott, are visiting the Manila Shatterdome with Lucky Seven.

Mako likes Hansen- _san_. He is not what she first imagined a pilot should be like, but he is polite and kind and respectful, even though there is a shadow in his eyes that never goes away. _Sensei_ says he lost his wife to the _kaiju_ , and Mako knows what it is to lose people you love.

“Hey, Miss Mori,” he says with that faint, gentle smile of his. “I got something for you. Stacker says you like chocolate and...well, I got a block of the stuff the other day...”

She looks at _sensei_ before accepting the gift, and he nods his approval.

Mako tucks her tablet under her arm so she can receive the gift with both hands.  “Thank you, Hansen-san.”

He smiles and bobs his head in his version of the informal bow. It looks rather funny, but Mako does not laugh because it would not be polite to Hansen- _san_.

“Giving sweets to little girls, hey, Herc?” Scott Hansen saunters up, tips a casual salute at _sensei_ , who receives it with the stiffness of courtesy, and grins at Mako in a way that makes her want to curl up very small so she’s out of sight.

“Shut up, you knob,” Hansen- _san_ mutters – at least, Mako thinks it is ‘you knob’, although that doesn’t seem quite right. He shoves his brother along with a quick, “Marshal, Miss Mori."

Mako looks down at the chocolate – a long, thin bar, black cardboard packaging on the outside and the chocolate sealed inside in a foil envelope

“That’s good stuff – made in Australia and expensive,” _Sensei_ tells her on the way to their car. “Even more expensive out of the country. He’s got a standing order with them. One bar a year.”

“Why?”

 _Sensei_ rests his hands on the wheel. “I’ve never asked.”

The chocolate is very dark and rich, and that night, Mako has one piece and puts the rest away to be taken out and eaten every few days, doled out like the treat it is.

It's not until Mako is fifteen and talking with Chuck Hansen that she learns that his mother loved expensive chocolate but refused to buy it on a mere whim. So every year, on her birthday, her husband would give her a block of this chocolate.

“ _Dunno what he does with it now. Buttering up the chicks, probably._ ”

Mako does not enlighten Chuck, although she thinks the sneer against his father is cruel.

It is, she is quite sure, an innocent gift from Hansen- _san_.

Still, after that, Mako leaves one square, uneaten, in an offering dish for a woman she has never met, but feels a kinship towards all the same.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tamsin gives Mako some life lessons.

_Sensei_ takes one scornful look at Tamsin’s pantry and goes out to buy ingredients.

“Idiot,” Tamsin pronounces bluntly after he’s gone. “There’s a rations unit down the road, and it’s not like I can taste anything right now. Real food’ll cost heaven and earth – more than he can afford.”

Mako glances at the door, uncertain of the undercurrents she can see are between _sensei_ and this woman who he speaks of with such fondness. “I could go after him?”

“Good luck with that. Even Luna couldn’t stop Stacks when he got an idea into his head.” She glares at the bare apartment as she runs her hand over her shaved head. “Sorry about this, Mako. I wasn’t expecting visitors.”

“You have been sick.”

“Well, it’d’ve been shit hospitality anyway.” Tamsin snorts, amused. “I was never the elegant and entertaining sort. Although...”

Mako watches from her perch in the ratty armchair as Tamsin pads across the room, and rummages behind a pile of dust-collecting books before declaring, “Aha!”

Mako is still learning to read English lettering, but she works out the word in her head when Tamsin presents her with the bar. “ _Her-shey’s_?”

“I never understood how America could make a 5-tonne aircraft radar-invisible, but couldn’t make a bar of chocolate worth a sh—damn.” Tamsin looks abashed. “I should probably watch my language around you, shouldn’t I? No swearing?”

“Fucking goddamn shithead of a cocksucking sonovabitch,” Mako says, feeling a little naughty.

Tamsin shouts with laughter. “Okay, so you’ve heard worse – probably off those kids at the Academy. But _I_ should still clean up my language, and _you_ shouldn’t swear like that.”

She starts unwrapping the chocolate bar, carelessly tearing off the wrapper.

Then she sees Mako’s horrified expression and rolls her eyes. “It’s for _eating_ , Mako, not worshipping!”

Mako does not contradict her out loud.

However, Tamsin is right about the chocolate – it is not quality. Too sweet, with the sugar hiding the taste of the cocoa beans. As Mako sweeps the odd residual flavour of the piece across her tongue, she thinks that it would not be very nice chocolate without the sweetness.

“I always forget how crappy American chocolate is until it’s actually in my mouth,” Tamsin muses. “Oh, their _dulce du leche_ M &Ms were amazing, but I last had them in...God...California, 2006...no, it was 2007, because that was the year Luna and I got to fly the Lightning II while the boys’ club fumed. Have another piece.”

Helping herself to another piece – it is still chocolate – Mako inquires, “The Lightning II?”

“Jet fighter. The F-35 Lightning,” Tamsin says with satisfaction. “Don’t ever let anyone with or without a dick say you can’t do something ‘cause you don’t have the balls. Your balls are here and here, Mako,” she taps her finger against her forehead and against her chest, “not between your legs.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mako prompts Vanessa to tell the truth.

The first time it happens, Mako doesn’t think to refuse. When it happens again, she has qualms but accepts it anyway. But the third time...

“I cannot take this,” she tells Ms. Wilmington – _Vanessa_ \- when she finds another scarlet tin sitting on the table as she brings the tea tray into the meeting room. “It is a gift from Dr. Gottlieb to _you_. He thinks you _like_ the chocolate.”

Vanessa’s expression does not quite become panicked.

“I can’t tell him, Mako. He...he doesn’t—He’s not the sort of man to give gifts. And, well, to tell him that he’s been getting it wrong all this time... It would—He’d be embarrassed. He might stop—” She trails off, and her shoulders sag. “I’m acting like a teenager with a crush, aren’t I?”

Mako does not agree out loud as she pours the tea. “If you told Dr. Gottlieb of something else you wanted instead, he would be delighted to find it for you.”

“Maybe.” Vanessa laughs a little sardonically. “I just... He’s so clever, and I imagine he thinks I’m just a pretty-faced bimbo—Oh, God, listen to me! Now I _am_ sounding like a teenager with a crush. Don’t smirk at me like that, Mako!”

Mako hides her smile. She likes Vanessa, who is practical and sensible and yet has a way of brightening any room she is in with the force of her personality. She is very pleased that Vanessa likes Dr. Gottlieb, who has a good heart inside his grumpiness and his prickly manners, and yet is very reticent about his relationships, where Dr. Geizsler is very open – sometimes too much so.

And yet this...comedy...is also very amusing in its own way. Even if she does not appreciate being brought into the middle of it.

“I will take this chocolate on condition that you tell Dr. Gottlieb to bring you other gifts in future. Or else I will tell him.”

Vanessa wrinkles her nose. “You drive a hard bargain, but...okay.”

Mako hands Vanessa a cup of tea. “Did you want to keep the tin?”

“No. I think that would smack just a little _too_ much of lovelorn teenager, don’t you?” Vanessa sighs as she sips the tea. “Thanks for listening to me...well... _angst_ about my love life – or lack of it.”

Since they are waiting for _sensei_ , Mako has a piece of chocolate from the tin. It is lovely and smooth, with slight overtones of fruit and spice amidst the rich darkness of the cacao. She swirls it through her mouth with great pleasure and takes small bites, the better to appreciate it.

She will miss the chocolate when Dr. Gottlieb stops buying it for Vanessa, but it is not as though it was bought for her in the first place anyway.

“So, Mako,” says Vanessa, smiling. “Enough about me. How’s _your_ love life going? Anyone on your horizons yet?”

“I do not have time for romance.”

She’s too busy with her studies, trying to show _sensei_ that she’s good enough to get into the Academy and become a Ranger. That is struggle enough for her for the moment without adding a romantic relationship into her life.

“Not right now, maybe.” There’s a wicked twinkle in the dark eyes. “But someday, Mako, some handsome young god of a guy will walk into the Shatterdome, take one look at you, and fall at your feet, and what are you going to do then?”

“Check that we are Drift-compatible,” Mako says promptly. “And that he likes chocolate.”


	4. Chapter 4

Disappointment is bitter in her mouth as she walks through the corridors of the PPDC Ranger Academy, although she shows none of it, and even manages small smiles for those she knows. By the time Mako reaches her room, however, she wants little more than to curl up with her pillow and indulge in some self-pity. If Mako did not come to Kodiak Island expecting to find someone with whom she was Drift-compatible, she still hoped to find someone with whom she could pilot a Jaeger. So far? No-one.

Her plans to sulk are thwarted as she unlocks her door. A message flashes up on her phone that she has a priority guest in the waiting area. Her spirits lift.

 _Sensei_.

When the doors to the Academy’s guest area slide open and he turns from the news screen he is watching, she feels the reassurance that his presence has always brought her and wonders if he knew. But that is a child's thought - so self-centered - and she pushes it away as he faces her.

“Mori- _san._ ” He inclines his head to her, courteously formal, Mako bows back.

“Marshal.”

“Congratulations on your performance today. The instructors tell me that you scored well against all your opponents.”

He speaks in Japanese and she answers likewise, using the flow of the words to mask her disappointment, although he surely knows of it already. “Too well to find a co-pilot, _sensei_.”

“The path to piloting a Jaeger is not an easy one, Mako. And it is not all you could do in the Jaeger program, either.”

“I know, Marshall.” She says it with some resignation. Becoming a Jaeger pilot is only a dream and likely to stay so. Jaeger production was halted two years ago, after Striker Eureka was commissioned with the Hansens, and since then fewer and fewer Jaegers have been repaired. But Mako will not dwell on her failure here; that is best left for solitude, after he has gone. “How are things in the Shatterdome?”

“We got a shipment from Panama City today.  That’s one of the reasons I’m here.” He plucks something off the table in the visiting area and holds it out to her. “It was found among their things.”

Mako takes the handcrafted box from his hands – textured cardboard and heavy paper, elegantly stamped with the artisan’s name, and tied with a gauze ribbon. She looks up at him stricken. Panama City. “Kennedy and Stephanie?”

“A birthday gift, I believe.” _Sensei’s_ voice is quiet.

The little card has a little coloured-in sketch of Hydra Corinthian holding up a banner - Stephanie’s manga-style art. The banner is in red and white above the Jaeger and reads ‘ _Happy Birthday!_ ’ Inside, Kennedy’s blocky lettering instructs her, _Enjoy it – but not all at once!_

Tears sting Mako’s eyes.

The box of Colombian chocolate lasts her nearly three months – exquisite little chocolate truffles, and the incredibly rare chocolate covered coffee beans that Stephanie remembered she liked.

Mako lingers over the chocolate and the memories, quietly savouring the bitter and the sweet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this was supposed to be Newt. He didn't turn up. (Probably too busy arguing with Hermann.) Have the Hydra Corinthian pilots instead...sort of...


	5. Chapter 5

When Aleksis opens the door she immediately frowns and pinches one of Mako’s sidelocks thoughtfully, drawing it out between her fingers. “Needs colour again. You come to me and we do it together, yes?” She indicates the dark shadows visible at the roots of her white-blonde hair.

Mako grins at the assumption that she wants it redone. It is correct, but still. “Okay.”

“Saturday,” Aleksis says, as though Mako has nothing better to do. “After lunch. And we will consult on your modification to Cherno Alpha. You have good idea, but we refine. And now,” she pushes Mako towards the couch where Sasha is adjusting the naked flame beneath the pot, “we drink.”

Mako takes a seat on the couch and smiles back at the bearded giant when he looks up at her and the intimidating crags of his face soften. “Chocolate,” he tells her, tilting the pot to show her the thick, gooey mixture he is stirring. “Russian-style. You will like.”

“So,” Aleksis announces as she leans against Sasha’s shoulder. “You are well, little one? They do not work you too hard?” Bright eyes study her. “Or is it that you work yourself too hard?”

Mako ducks her head. “The Marshal works harder.”

Aleksis makes a snorting sound. “Pentecost is Pentecost. There is only one of him and we do not know if to thank God or curse Him for it.” She nudges Sasha. “What did he say about the chocolate?”

“He does not know. He does not want to know.” Sasha shrugs – a great mountain of a shrug that still conveys great amusement. “He does not ask, so I do not tell him it was legal tender.”

Mako grins and quotes _sensei_. “The smooth running of a Shatterdome requires many blind eyes.”

“If Pentecost has even one blind eye, then I am a Chinese gymnast. He misses nothing.” Sasha holds out a hand and Aleksis passes him the bottle of cream with a fluidity that speaks of their unity out of the Conn-Pod and not only in it.

Mako is no longer the child who asked _sensei_ to teach her how to drive a Jaeger; no longer the student who hoped to find a co-pilot at the Academy. Her dreams are only that – dreams. She does good work in Jaeger repairs. Still, sometimes she aches for what cannot be.

The cream is stirred into the chocolate, and the heat turned down to a simmer. She watches in fascination as Sasha ladles out the hot liquid into a mug – a richly aromatic ooze, then holds out her hands to receive the mug.

She wraps her hands around the pottery, feeling it heat her palms in the midst of the Vladivostok cold. The drink is very hot, and she simply lets her nose linger in the steam. The thick, dark scent of it fills her senses before she sighs it out – a soft wind of weariness.

“You are tired, little bear?” Aleksis holds Sasha’s mug as he turns off the stove and puts the saucepan in the sink.

“A little,” Mako admits, hunching over her cup. “It is just...there is always so much to do.”

“And no end in sight.” Aleksis nods, sagely, lifting the mug for Sasha to take without even looking over her shoulder. “But if we must burn the candle at both ends, it is for a worthy cause, yes?”

“If we must burn the candle at both ends,” Sasha sits and holds out his mug in toast, “then we go out in flame and good chocolate, eh?”

Mako drinks to the toast, because it _is_ good chocolate, thick and rich and with delicate overtones of coffee and cinnamon. Still she thinks she should rather not go out – in flame, or otherwise.


	6. Chapter 6

“I thought I might find you here.”

Mako doesn’t look up from her code as Tendo pauses in the Conn-Pod entrance. “I was just finishing this calibration.”

She tries to ignore Tendo as he roams around studying her modifications to Gipsy’s control systems. Out of all the people who once worked with the Beckets, Tendo has been the most supportive. He is not judging – just looking.

Still, she is nervous enough to reach for the chocolate which has kept her company all afternoon. It is not dinner, but it will—

Her fingers rustle empty foil and she grimaces.

“All out?” Tendo asks, not without some sympathy as he comes back around to where she’s seated, cross-legged, on a thin, flat cushion on the decking. “Well, I gotta say the changes look good. Solid work. You should be proud. And by ‘proud’, I mean ‘not here at this time on a Friday night’.”

“It is not as though I had plans.”

Tendo shakes his head, ruefully. “Just because some of us are workaholics doesn’t mean you should follow our lead. The world is ending – eat, drink, and be merry! At your age, Mako, you should be out with company, living it up.”

“But I _have_ company,” Mako smiles, patting the grille decking beside her cushion as she looks up at the lensing array that forms the golden visor of the Jaeger. “Gipsy and I know each other very well now.”

When she looks back at Tendo, he’s watching her with a touch of surprise – and something else. “Does she ever answer back?”

“No.” Mako hesitates, uncertain whether she should say more, but this is Tendo. “But I believe…she likes being here – being fixed. She was broken, but she will have a purpose again.”

“ _That little flame that lights a fire_ …” Tendo murmurs and grins. “Never mind. You wouldn’t have seen it, merest baby that you are.”

“I am twenty,” she protests.

“Twenty going on two hundred, and yet I bet you didn’t remember dinner.” Tendo sighs when she looks down at her tablet, abashed. “I really shouldn’t. Pentecost is going to kill me for encouraging you…”

Mako stares, wide-eyed at the small bar of chocolate sitting in his outstretched hands. “You did not just have that on you.”

“I got some bribes from Lima today. So...Happy Birthday!”

He is teasing her. “My birthday is in April.”

“Merry Christmas?”

“Christmas is not for another two months.”

“時代祭り?”

“Tendo!” Mako rolls her eyes, but accepts the gift as he gave it – traditionally, with both hands. “Thank you.”

He sighs as he stands again. “You shouldn’t be working this hard, Mako.”

“We do what we must.” It is one of _sensei’s_ sayings.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of.” For a moment, Tendo looks not just serious, but grim. “Look, just...try to get out of here before midnight, okay?”

“I promise.” Mako turns the slender bar of chocolate over in her hands, touched. “Thank you.”

She does get out before midnight – just. And the chocolate lasts her all that time, dark and bitter, with little jewels of crystallised orange peel that linger sweetly on her tongue.


	7. Chapter 7

The shoebox Tamsin left for them is sealed with grey duct tape, on which is scrawled ‘ _USE THE FORCE, STACKS_ ’ in an untidy hand.

 _Sensei_ chuckles when he sees it – the first time that Mako has seen him smile in far too long. She has vague memories of the joke: a light side and a dark side and...something about holding the world together? But it is not the joke which warms him, but the memories that come with it. Of Tamsin, and perhaps his sister, and better times.

Mako pulls out the knife on her pocket utility tool, silently offering it to _sensei_ to cut through the tape.

Inside are fitted a small round jar with a red lid, some smaller boxes, and some old photos – polaroids, their edges worn and stained with tape residue.

A glimpse of the top one shows a much younger _sensei_ and Tamsin, along with a woman who must be Luna Pentecost. Mako gives _sensei_ what space she can as he looks through the photos, picking up the red-lidded jar to inspect it’s label: _Bovril._

“I didn’t think they made Bovril anymore,” _sensei_ comments when he sees what she has. “I haven’t had that in years – Tam’s gran used to swear by it as a cure-all for...well, everything.”

“It is good?”

“Well, that’s a matter of opinion. Now these...” He reaches into the shoebox and pulls out a long, cream-coloured box with a pink rim. “Some admirer must have sent her these: they’re worth their weight in titanium now.”

Mako reads the label – gold on a pink rectangle that matches the pink rim of the box top – _Charbonnel et Walker_ , _English Rose & Violet Creams_. Then _sensei_ opens the box to reveal twelve chocolates, crowned with tiny crystalline dobs of pink and purple.

When she looks up at him, he smiles, probably amused by her wide-eyed expression. “We’ll have them later, I think.”

They go through the rest of the things boxed up from Tamsin’s apartment after she died, and kept in storage for them until now. But there’s nothing else that _sensei_ wants apart from the contents of the shoebox, and Mako only takes the horn comb and brush set inlaid with mother-of-pearl that once belonged to Tamsin’s gran. She thinks that Tamsin would not mind her having it.

Later that night, while _sensei_ mixes up a mug of Bovril, Mako sips her tea and lingers over her memories of Tamsin – from that first glimpse by the window, so glad to see _sensei_ again, so willing to welcome the little girl who came with him, to the last brisk smile. “ _Don’t let him run himself into the ground, okay?_ ”

She watches _sensei_ take his metharocin and eats two of the creams at his urging, although he will only take one for himself. “They’re yours,” he tells her with a smile. “I can’t taste them so well anymore. You’ll appreciate them, at least.”

Still, Mako finds that all the floral sweetness of the sugary centres and all the rich darkness of the chocolates cannot disguise the bitter taste of _sensei’s_ mortality.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still doing this. One more to go!

In the aftermath of Pitfall, Mako wants quiet.

There is no quiet in city or the Shatterdome, amidst the celebrating masses - even amidst the tears, there is gladness. And yes, Mako is fiercely glad that the Breach is closed and the _kaiju_ defeated, but she wants some silence for herself and her grief.

Well, for herself, her grief, and for Raleigh.

So when Raleigh takes her had and draws her away up to the Wei brothers distillery, she goes without protest and allows him to settle them down on the couch, stretched out together like the lovers they aren’t – not yet.

“Not yet,” he echoes against her neck, even as his hand slides under her shirt to rest in the small of her back. Comforting rather than caressing, and tender as his murmur in her ear. “I try not to have sex on the first Drift.”

Mako smiles into his shoulder. “It was our third.”

“Mm. So don’t tempt me.”

Her laughter chokes on sudden tears, and then she cannot stop weeping. For _sensei_ , for Cheung, and Hu, and Jin, for Sasha and Aleksis, and even for Chuck. For Herc who feels the sting of Chuck’s loss, for Tamsin, still so recently dead, for the many others of her family who went down fighting in the years past – and for Yancy, whose loss echoes in her through Raleigh.

And Raleigh clings tight to her and breathes through his own grief, a feedback cycle of intimate memory and emotion that is only broken when the the door opens on an argument.

“—your thick skull that they might not _wish_ for company—”

“Then they would have locked the door. And you’ve followed me all the way—Oh, hey, um, wow, are we interrupting?”

Mako blots her eyes on Raleigh’s shirt, even as Raleigh huffs in exasperation.

“He asks _now_ ,” Dr. Gottlieb notes, and reaches inside his jacket. “We bring an offering. It would be a peace offering, but for the fact that I doubt we bring peace.”

“Speak for yourself, Hermann! I’m plenty peaceful. I’m just not _restful_.”

Resignation echoes between them, and Mako sits up to accept the offering. “Thank you, Dr. Gottlieb.”

The chocolate is rich and dark, just the way she likes it. She sniffs it, careful and deep, lingering over the bean aromas with appreciation. Beneath her, Raleigh shifts, and her eyes focus on him. He lifts his chin a little, asking for a taste.

By the door, the Drs. G are arguing with each other, irascible and irrelevant.

Mako doesn’t hear them as she peels back the foil and takes a little nibble, smearing the chocolate across her palate. _Yes..._ Dark and smooth, cherry and coffee and a hint of something spicy in the rich, pure beans. The pleasure of the flavours reflects in Raleigh’s eyes, and she breaks off a piece and offers it to him.

Raleigh lifts himself up on his elbows and his lips close around the chocolate as his tongue strokes the very tips of her fingers.

Rich flavours burst across her tastebuds, and fire quivers into life beneath her breastbone, licking delicate tendrils through her insides.

 _Sex on the third Drift_ , Mako thinks, dazed, as Raleigh grins.

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be a multipart series - Mako and chocolate and her relationships with: Tamsin, Vanessa, Newt, Tendo, Aleksis&Sasha, Stacker, and finally Raleigh. We'll see how it goes. :)


End file.
